((From
Google translate... "By accessing shale oil in the U.S. in twenty years
never so much oil pumped up. But the oil revolution brings an
unexpected danger with it that might lead to a catastrophe"))

Loosely translated: There
has been a major increase in the extraction of shale oil in the US,
more than in the previous 20 years. This ‘oil revolution’, however,
causes unexpected danger, which could
have a catastrophic outcome. In three years, there has been a tenfold
increase in train incidents with highly inflammable oil. Because of new
extraction techniques in North Dakota more oil is being extracted than
ever. The number of trains transporting this oil has increased
twenty-fold. The railways and bridges are poorly maintained and cannot
cope with this increase. Therefore people fear that a catastrophe is
waiting to happen, just like last years’ accident in Canada with an oil
train which blew up half a city center and caused the death of 47
people. The US National Transportation Safety board advices these old
trains to be replaced by tanks with thicker steel holds and stress that
these transport should avoid villages and cities. Although all agree
that these transports as they are carried out at the moment are a major
threat, the necessary changes in legislation have not been made yet and
transports are still being carried out, straight through populated
areas.

Friday, July 11, 2014

Officials: No evidence brine in bay after ND spill.

Interestingly enough the story fails to point out that this is another byproduct of the Bakken crude fracking industry. (JLW)

Published: Friday, July 11, 2014 at 3:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Friday, July 11, 2014 at 2:39 a.m.

MANDAREE, N.D. (AP) — The snaking, nearly 2-mile trail of
saltwater that an underground pipeline spewed in the rugged hills of
western North Dakota's badlands left a 200-yard-long stretch of dead
vegetation, a company official said, though she added there is no
evidence yet that the spill has contaminated a nearby bay.

On
Friday, officials were expected to continue investigating the extent of
the damage and cause of the pipeline leak that spilled nearly 1 million
gallons of saltwater, an unwanted byproduct of oil and gas production.
Also called brine, saltwater is considered an environmental hazard by
the state.
The path the saltwater took into a ravine left a patch
of dead vegetation as wide as 100 feet in some points, said Miranda
Jones, vice president of environmental safety and regulatory at
Houston-based Crestwood Midstream Partners LP. The pipeline belonged to
Crestwood subsidiary Arrow Pipeline LLC.

That ravine flows into
Bear Den Bay, a tributary of Lake Sakakawea. Sakakawea, one of the
nation's largest man-made lakes, is a drinking water source for the Fort
Berthold Indian reservation.
On a boat trip to the bay Thursday,
The Associated Press saw no visible signs of contamination. Waterfowl
were present in the area — some sitting close to the bright yellow booms
placed at the point where the ravine meets the bay. Booms had also been
placed around a nearby water-intake system used by the reservation.

The
company believes the spill began over the Fourth of July weekend. In
the first public statement in the two days since the spill was detected,
the Environmental Protection Agency said it had no confirmed reports
that the saltwater had reached Bear Den Bay. The agency said most of the
spill was pooled on the ground, soaked into the soil or held behind
beaver dams.
Jones also said Thursday that there is no evidence the bay had been contaminated.

On
Wednesday, Jones spoke to The Associated Press with Three Affiliated
Tribes chairman Tex Hall, who said then that the spill had leaked into
the bay. On Thursday, Jones said the chairman was referring to the
ravine.
The area where the spill occurred is in a patch of North
Dakota's badlands — a dramatic, remote and rugged landscape
characterized by steep-sided hills dropping into ravines.

Claryca
Mandan, natural resources administrator for the Mandan, Hidatsa and
Arikara tribes' natural resources department, said the area is "one of
the worst places it could have happened" as the geography complicates
cleanup and remediation efforts.

Cleanup crews were carrying equipment into the bottom of the ravine by hand Thursday.
On top of the bluff where the spill occurred, workers could be observed shoveling contaminated earth and taking soil samples.
At the bottom of the ravine, Jones said, crews were removing contaminated water and using pipes to pump in fresh water.

The EPA said it was assessing the site to ensure none of the brine had affected Lake Sakakawea. Crestwood
agreed to take the AP and a local television station to view part of
the affected area on Thursday, but with limitations on where and when
photographs could be taken.

Fort
Berthold Indian Reservation plays a key role in the state's oil
production, the second-highest in the nation. The reservation currently
represents more than 300,000 of North Dakota's 1 million barrels of oil
produced daily, according to the state's Department of Mineral
Resources.
___
MacPherson reported from Bismarck, N.D.
___
Contact Josh Wood at https://twitter.com/JWoodAP

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

On June 16, 2014, A train carrying tank cars filled with fuel oil, Hazmat # 1993
derailed this afternoon with no explosions, no fire balls, no injuries.
It was NOT Bakken Crude.

UN No. 1993

Placard Subject: FLAMMABLE LIQUIDS n.o.s., FUEL OIL

Hazard Class: FLAMMABLE LIQUID

No. 3

I was able to get a ride with SouthWings pilot Dick McGlauphlin to survey the wreck site seen above. While this was nothing to ignore, it could have been so much worse. This was a light fuel oil placard # 1993.

1993 placard, fuel oil

Here are some shots taken Sunday morning 06/22/14 from a SouthWings
plane. It shows a pretty good job of containment. I saw no signs of
large leaks or spillage. One thing stuck out to me. There were 4 DOT-111 cars on the tracks to pump oil into from the wrecked cars. There were 6 wrecked cars. I hope there were a couple of empties when it went in the ditch or something doesn't add up.

The aerial photos of the scene tell a lot about just how bad this could have gotten. Note the proximity of houses to the tracks.

Buhl Alabama oil train wreck 06/16/14

Now look at the footprint of the Aliceville Bakken Crude train wreck. Try to get your head around just how many of the houses in Buhl were in jeopardy.

I make that connection because the line going through Buhl is or was the chosen alternate route for unit trains carrying Bakken Crude or more commonly now called "Bomb Trains". The rail road claims it isn't using the line for that anymore. Still, oil trains of some description were rolling on this line until the Buhl wreck. A track that is in very bad need of overhaul in my opinion. Below is a photo of a unit train going through downtown Northport and Tuscaloosa.

The tracks where the Buhl wreck happened and this bridge are on the same route. I went to several crossings and shot some pretty disturbing photos to me. The rail road has dismissed them as follows:

"Most
of the photos show typical Class I track, which would be 5
non-defective ties per 39 feet of track, or 5 of 24 ties. While the
observation of this track can lead to concerns, the track should be able
to handle trains moving at 10 mph or less." I added emphasis on the word "should".

I find it a bit concerning that the bottom level of safety is the high bar for this line. Only 5 of every 24 cross ties must be sound. It sure seems to me that if hazardous cargo is being shipped on the line which goes through Sipsey Swamp, it should be held to a little higher standard than the low bar for safety.

I saw and photographed a lot of rotten ties at every crossing I came to. That is something people all over the country should be paying attention to. If the infrastructure isn't sound, I don't care what type tank cars that are used, it is irrelevant if the tracks are not up to the loads. People should start now documenting track conditions and reporting them to the National Transportation Safety Board: NTSB

The low bar shouldn't be the high bar where people's lives are concerned.

Monday, June 16, 2014

A train carrying tank cars filled with Light Fuel Oil, Hazmat # 1993 derailed this afternoon with no explosions, no fire balls, no injuries. It was NOT Bakken Crude.

Due to a camera malfunction the photos were not that great at the scene but I was able to capture the incident fairly well. What is more important to me than the wreck is why the wreck happened. I took time to drive across every railroad crossing along the path.

Rotten cross ties, missing rail plates, dips and waves in the tracks that were quite scary since I had video taped a Bakken Crude train on these very tracks not too long ago. This line is in very bad condition and was probably the cause of the wreck. It should be mentioned that this is the route that was used as an alternate route for Bakken crude bomb trains after the Aliceville Alabama explosion.

Check out the photos below and see for yourself what is right outside most neighborhoods across America.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Oil mars Ala. swamp months after crude train crash

JAY REEVES

Photo by Jay Reeves, AP

John Wathen, an environmentalist with the Waterkeeper
Alliance, gestures at the site of a train derailment and oil spill near
Aliceville, Ala., on Wednesday, May 5, 2014.

Environmental regulators say
cleanup and containment work is continuing at the site, but critics
contend the accident and others show the danger of transporting large
amounts of oil in tanker trains. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)

ALICEVILLE, Ala. (AP) - Environmental regulators promised an
aggressive cleanup after a tanker train hauling 2.9 million gallons of
crude oil derailed and burned in a west Alabama swamp in early November
amid a string of North American oil train crashes.
So why is dark, smelly crude oil still oozing into the water four months later?
The
isolated wetland smelled like a garage when a reporter from The
Associated Press visited last week, and the charred skeletons of burned
trees rose out of water covered with an iridescent sheen and swirling,
weathered oil. A snake and a few minnows were some of the few signs of
life.
An environmental group now says it has found ominous traces
of oil moving downstream along an unnamed tributary toward a big creek
and the Tombigbee River, less than 3 miles away. And the mayor of a
North Dakota town where a similar crash occurred in December fears
ongoing oil pollution problems in his community, too.
As the
nation considers new means of transporting fuel over long distances,
critics of crude oil trains have cited the Alabama derailment as an
example of what can go wrong when tanker cars carrying millions of
gallons of so-called Bakken crude leave the tracks. Questions about the
effectiveness of the Alabama cleanup come as the National Transportation
Safety Board considers tighter rules for the rail transportation of
Bakken oil, which is produced mainly by the fracking process in the
Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana. Oil production is increasing
there, boosting the amount of oil being transported across the country.
Environmentalist
John Wathen, who has conducted tests and monitored the Alabama site for
months for Waterkeeper Alliance, said Genesee & Wyoming railroad
and regulators did the bare minimum to spruce up an isolated, rural site
and left once the tracks were repaired so trains could run again.
"I
believe they really thought that because it's out of sight, out of
mind, out in the middle of a swamp, that nobody was going to pay
attention," said Wathen.
Regulators and the company deny any such thing occurred, however.
The
Environmental Protection Agency and the Alabama Department of
Environmental Management, which oversaw the cleanup, say more than
10,700 gallons of oil were skimmed from the water after the derailment,
and workers collected about 203,000 gallons of oil from damaged rail
cars using pumps. Another 290 cubic yards of oily dirt was excavated
with heavy equipment, or enough to cover a basketball court with soil
nearly 2 feet deep.
Yet four months later, officials still say no
one knows exactly how much oil was spilled. That's mainly because an
unknown amount of oil burned in a series of explosions and a huge fire
that lasted for hours after the crash. Since no one knows how much oil
burned, officials also can't say how much oil may be in the swamp.
About
a month after the crash, the head of Alabama's environmental agency,
Lance LeFleur, promised "aggressive recovery operations" in a written
assessment for a state oversight commission. He said the oil had been
contained in a "timely" manner and none had left the wetlands.
Michael
Williams, a spokesman for the Connecticut-based Genesee & Wyoming,
which owns the short-line Alabama & Gulf Coast Railway line where
the crash occurred, said the company is still monitoring the site
closely and maintaining a system of barriers meant to keep oil from
spreading. The work is continuous, he said.
But regulators and the
railroad confirm one of Wathen's worst fears: That environmental
agencies let the railroad repair the badly damaged rail bed and lay new
tracks before all the spilled oil was removed. Wathen calls the move a
mistake that's behind the continuing seepage of oil into the water.
"I
do agree that they needed to get the rail cars out. But there were
other ways to do it," said Wathen. "Those would have been more
expensive."
James Pinkney, an EPA spokesman in Atlanta, said the
rail line had to be fixed quickly to remove oil and damaged rail cars
that still contained crude from the wetland.
Agencies are now
working with the company and its contractors to recover the remaining
oil trapped in the rail bed, but it's unclear when or how that might
happen.
"The EPA and ADEM are continuing to work together to
insure all recoverable oil is removed from the site," Pinkney in a
written response to questions.
Ed Overton, an environmental
sciences professor at Louisiana State University, said spilled crude can
linger at a site indefinitely if it's buried in the ground. Depending
on the amount of oil that remains, he said, containment devices may be
needed in the swamp for at least a couple of years.
But Bakken
crude evaporates quickly once exposed to air because of its composition,
said Overton, so the fact that oil remains in the swamp isn't "the end
of the world."
"It's going to look bad for awhile," he said. "It's
amazing how quickly Mother Nature can handle such things, but it will
take time."
The cause of the derailment - which happened at a
wooden trestle that was destroyed by the flames and since has been
replaced by buried culverts that let water flow underneath the tracks -
remains under investigation by the Federal Railroad Administration.
The
crash site appears in better shape now than right after the derailment,
partly because burned tanker cars misshapen by explosions are gone.
Much of the water surrounding the site appears clear, and the odor from
the site isn't bad enough to reach the home of Leila Hudgins, just a few
hundred yards away.
"I haven't smelled anything," said Hudgins. "They did a good job. They hauled off truckload after truckload."
The
crash site, located off an old dirt road and a new one that was built
during the response, is accessible both by car and foot, but Hudgins
said she hasn't looked closely at the spot where it happened.
The
railroad said testing hasn't detected any groundwater contamination, and
EPA said air monitoring ended about a month after the crash when it
became apparent there were no airborne health hazards.
Still,
questions linger. Wathen said he has been taking water samples several
hundred yards downstream from the crash site and has detected the
chemical fingerprint of so-called Bakken crude, which the train was
carrying with it derailed.
"There's no question it is outside
their containment area, and I think it's even further away," said
Wathen. "This is an environmental disaster that could go on for years."
The
Alabama train was on a southbound run when it derailed less than 3
miles south of Aliceville, a town of about 2,400 people near the
Mississippi line. Another oil train derailed and burned in December at
Casselton, N.D., and 47 people died in July when a train carrying Bakken
oil exploded and burned in Quebec.
The mayor of Casselton, Ed
McConnell said he has been keeping up with the Alabama cleanup because
spilled oil also was buried under the rebuilt railroad tracks near his
town of 2,400 people. He worries that oil will reappear on the ground at
Casselton as the spring thaw begins in coming weeks.
"It's still
in the ground here, too," said McConnell. "They've hauled a lot of dirt
and stuff out. But they covered up the (oily) dirt before getting it all
up and rebuilt the track to get it going."
Alabama's
environmental agency said it still regularly visits the wreck site,
which is encircled with the same sort of absorbent fencing, oil-snaring
pom-poms and plastic barriers that were used on the Gulf Coast after the
BP well blowout in 2010.
Once the "emergency" phase ends, the
state environmental agency will install wells to monitor groundwater,
said spokesman Jerome Hand.
Government regulators will approve any plans for removing remaining oil from the site, he said.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Aliceville a day after "repairs"

I returned a couple of days later for followup after a rain event. When I got there it was obvious that someone had been there since my last visit. There was some new boom in place in a few places as well as a new string of "pom-pom" booms had been placed around the tracks. There had been a fairly significant rain event Sunday night and Monday so in all likelihood the repairs were made on Tuesday. There was a lot of oil gone but I can't say whether they cleaned it up or the rain washed it through the wetland downstream.

It was good to see some degree of effort but it was minimal at best. Oil was still weeping out of the ground with sheen on the surface.

Downstream of the tracks the new products seemed to be containing the
oil for the time being but more oil was pouring of of the ground fast
enough to see with the naked eye.

10:24 A.M

11:13 A.M.

11:15 A.M.

11:15 A.M.

As the sun warmed the soil, the crude came out faster. It's hard to say when if ever this will stop.

On the upstream side of the tracks there had been some boom replaced up close but the outside perimeter screens were down and or flapping in the breeze. Some oil collected in this fabric is being released back into the water when the wind blows it high enough to start flapping. Try wetting a towel and snap the water out of it, you'll probably get wet. Same principal.

03/02/14

03/02/14

03/02/14

03/02/14

03/05/14

03/05/14

03/05/14

03/05/14

Weathered oil could be seen inside and outside the containment.

It seems to me like if they were going to go to the effort of replacing the products along the tracks it would be more feasible to complete the job all round instead of piecemeal slap and dash repairs.